The Basic Research Immersion Training Experience (BRITE) veterinary student program is designed as an intensive research-oriented experience directed towards attracting our most talented professional students into biomedical research careers. To this end, the program will expose select students to methodologies involved in design and execution of laboratory experiments and ethical issues pertinent to biomedical research, at a formative stage of their veterinary education. Most important, the BRITE program will provide veterinary students interested in a research career with a flexible, integrated and subsidized training opportunity, not only an in-depth mentored biomedical research experience, but also the chance either to earn an M.S. degree or "jump-start" a combined D.V.M./Ph.D. program. The BRITE program faculty is comprised of established, productive senior investigators and well-trained, motivated mid-career and junior faculty, with active laboratories, a strong history of collaboration, and wide-ranging technical expertise. The seventeen participating faculty represent four academic departments: Anatomy & Physiology, Diagnostic Medicine & Pathobiology, Clinical Sciences, and Biochemistry. Thus, BRITE students will be able to investigate problems relevant to human health at the molecular, cellular, and organismal levels. BRITE graduates will be expected to develop into biomedical scientists, and to contribute substantially to our national research effort by performing animal-oriented, hypothesis-based research.